


Shrink

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, The closes thing to crack I have ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28469193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Whilst in the middle of a job, Eliot is shrunk down to the size of a doll. So it goes.
Relationships: Alec Hardison & Parker & Eliot Spencer
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23
Collections: 2020 Leverage Secret Santa Exchange





	Shrink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fey4life](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fey4life/gifts).



> I hope this in some way amuses you.

There were a few details missing from the client’s information. Hardison can admit that. Hell, he can admit he didn’t pick up on the gaps himself, because he’s big enough to own his mistakes. 

‘Big enough?’ Eliot gripes, his voice tiny through the earbud. He sounds angry. ‘You just wait until I get back, and I’ll-‘

‘You’ll what, Eliot?’ Hardison asks, even as he turns to Sophie and pulls a face at her. She’s trying to tell him something, but he isn’t fully versed in her dramatic, flourishing actor’s semaphore or whatever she’s using. Besides, he needs to focus on Eliot, who should be out of the mark’s apartment building by now, but isn’t. ‘You’ll hit me? Is that it? You’ll, what, twist my head off? Man, you couldn’t even get your arms around my ear right now. How you gonna do me any damage?’

Sophie drops her arms and rolls her eyes. This one, he knows. She’s telling him he’s being an ass. Or, no, this is Sophie. An arsehole. 

He makes a shocked and offended face at her and spins back to his screens. 

‘I don’t need to get my arms around anything to hurt you, okay?’ Eliot growls. It’s disturbingly cute, is what it is, but there’s no chance the man will want to hear that. ‘Give me a route out of here!’

‘Real good incentive, threatening me with pain if I succeed,’ Hardison mutters, but he’s almost got what he needs to put together a basic model of the room Eliot’s in, one which will let him map out a route for a furious ex-soldier who’s suddenly not even as tall as an Action Man. 

‘Almost there,’ Parker says, thankfully cutting into Eliot’s cursing and continued threats. ‘What’s my way in?’

Nate’s plan doesn’t have Parker going into the place at all, but even Nate can’t predict something like this. It would be good if he could think something up on the fly, but Nate’s currently in a room their comms can’t reach and will be for another…yeah, for another forty minutes. Assuming nothing else goes wrong, that is. 

It’s a good thing Hardison’s a genius, that’s all. 

‘You are visiting your uncle in apartment…3b. Sweet old guy. Just got back from abroad and moved in here, so it shouldn’t be too strange they haven’t seen you around, yet.’

‘Uncle?’ Sophie exclaims from behind him. ‘Hardison, you didn’t say it was an uncle.’

‘Sure, I did. I said-‘

Sophie’s hands clamp onto his shoulders and he feels her breath by his right ear. She’s almost hissing.

‘You said nothing to indicate I’d need to play a man.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Parker asks, soundly mildly interested.

She only sounded mildly interested when told Eliot had shrunk down to the size of a doll, as though in Parker’s world that kind of thing is just as likely as anything else. 

‘No,’ Hardison says.

‘Yes,’ Sophie insists, over the end of his word. ‘The voice modulator broke the last time I used it. You haven’t fixed it yet.’

‘Sophie, come on,’ Hardison snaps, because he has enough to deal with. Eliot is trapped on a desk in a study, for crying out loud. A desk. Because he’s doll sized. ‘You’ve got range! You can handle this.’

That gets him a huff, which makes his ear feel weird, but he’s a confident, genius man who’s in charge of his life, so he doesn’t let it bother him. 

‘Have you any idea the kind of vocal warmup I need to reach a convincing register for the role?’ she asks. 

But she pushes away from him and he hears her beginning some kind of half-sung recitation, so he’s confident she’ll be ready. 

Eliot’s exit plan included the standard repairman bit, with a twist so it would work with the ridiculous internal security system the mark had installed six months back. It’s no Steranko. In all honesty, it’s something of a joke. Parker laughed a lot. 

Unfortunately, the mark’s suitably paranoid business partner had a better system put in the hallway, one Hardison would need to be on site to disable or fool, so the fact Eliot can’t wear the outfit anymore is the least of their worries. They can’t risk a miniature Eliot being caught on camera. That’ll give away the fact he accessed the prototype device the mark unwisely brought home from work. The prototype device that apparently can’t put Eliot back to his usual height. 

Thank all the gods that the base layer of Eliot’s outfit shrank with him, or there’d be a tiny, naked Eliot working up to throttling Hardison’s…well. Maybe he could throttle Hardison’s pinkie finger. 

Not the point. He needs to focus. He needs to focus on this totally manageable, not freaky situation, which means explaining to Parker what she needs to do. 

‘So the uncle is out cold by now, every evening. He’s on one of those sleep monitors, which just lets anybody into its data. Seriously, this thing doesn’t even think about asking you to buy dinner, first. You just gotta think in its direction and it’s spilling all its secrets. I don’t see why-‘

‘Hardison!’ Eliot snaps. 

‘Right. Right. The whole…tiny Eliot thing.’

He ignores the indignant spluttering from Eliot as he coordinates with Parker how long she’ll need to get through 3b and to the window that’s directly under the living room window of the mark’s apartment. 

At the same time, he handles the connections for the outgoing calls from the building’s doorman, and is ready by the time Parker speaks to the man. Sophie does an excellent job of sounding like an old man. It’s spooky, is what it is. 

Eliot doesn’t stop grousing the entire time.

‘And how exactly is Parker getting up to me? Or are you thinking I can jump? Huh?’

Eliot has a point. Parker doesn’t have the right gear with her to make it up the polished side of the building. 

‘You can abseil down,’ Parker states, like that’s obvious. 

She’s through reception now and in the elevator, on her way up to the uncle’s place. 

‘Parker, I can’t even get down from this desk.’

And that’s Eliot’s worried angry growl. Must be hard for the guy, not being able to tackle danger to the ground. Hell, Eliot would normally be the second one to leap off something if needs be. He’d barely notice something like a desk, unless he was breaking something off it to use as a weapon. 

‘Is there any string?’ Parker asks. ‘Something you can use to make a rope.’

There is not, it transpires, any string. They go through a few suggestions until Parker makes a gleeful sound and tells Eliot to look for paperclips. There’s a whole load of those. 

Listening to Eliot complaining about making a chain of them would be hilarious if it didn’t take him so damn long. 

Later, Nate cradles a glass of whisky in his hand and listens to his team. 

‘You got to ride on a Roomba!’ Parker exclaims, as though she genuinely feels left out. ‘I’ve never got to ride on a Roomba.’

‘The cat he didn’t tell me about tried to get on it with me,’ Eliot says, jabbing a finger at Hardison, who is lying on the couch with a damp towel over his eyes. 

He’s already demanded danger money for how scrambled the schematics for the device made his brain. Nate didn’t point out they don’t have salaries or fees. Hardison knows that. Hardison also turned Nate’s bedroom into a laboratory that belongs in a bad SciFi film, which is why Eliot is back to full size. 

‘I swear you made me shorter on purpose,’ Eliot grumbles. ‘This apron is too long on me, Hardison. What, you think it’s funny to take inches off me?’

Nate notes that Eliot doesn’t slow down in his preparation of one of Hardison’s favourite pasta dishes, despite all the complaining, but he doesn’t comment on that, either. He just finishes his drink and wonders how best to get rid of the device before Parker can try it on herself.


End file.
